Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is a 1955 American three-act play written by Tennessee Williams. The play, an adaptation of his 1952 short story "Three Players of a Summer Game", was written between 1953 and 1955. One of Williams's more famous works and his personal favorite, the play won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1955. Set in the "plantation home in the Mississippi Delta" of Big Daddy Pollitt, a wealthy cotton tycoon, the play examines the relationships among members of Big Daddy's family, primarily between his son Brick and Maggie the "Cat", Brick's wife.
First edition cover (New Directions)
Barbara Bel Geddes as Maggie in the original Broadway production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955)
Ben Gazzara as Brick in the original Broadway production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955)
Thomas Lanier Williams III, known by his pen name Tennessee Williams, was an American playwright and screenwriter. Along with contemporaries Eugene O'Neill and Arthur Miller, he is considered among the three foremost playwrights of 20th-century American drama.
Williams in 1965
Williams at age 5 (1916) in Clarksdale, Mississippi
Williams arriving at funeral services for Dylan Thomas in 1953
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